Archives for March 2006

buy.at, the UK’s largest privately owned affiliate marketing network has secured its future growth following a £7.3 million investment from Cazenove Private Equity (CPE). The company will be chaired by Bruce McLaren who led Advertising.com as International CEO to a successful sale to AOL Time Warner.

In 2002, Perfiliate Technologies Limited launched the buy.at affiliate network. Over the last three years the network has rapidly expanded to provide affiliate marketing solutions for many of the leading names in the UK including AA, BT, John Lewis, Lloyds TSB, M&S, T-Mobile, Sky and many more.

The £7.3 million investment from CPE will ensure that buy.at will continue to be the fastest growing UK affiliate network, with a leading reputation in the sector. Steve Brown, Chief Executive of buy.at said:

“The investment from CPE is a huge milestone for the buy.at network, allowing us to maintain strong growth and gain an ever increasing foothold in the market place. The investment permits us to improve our focus to ensure that we continue to deliver according to our clients’ expectations – offering exceptional delivery coupled with cutting edge technology.

“To further differentiate the buy.at network from our competitors, we will continue to concentrate on enhancing our service, innovation and providing an industry leading affiliate solution”.

CPE specialises in investing in the brightest prospects in the UK and European technology, media and telecoms sectors. Companies backed by CPE, such as buy.at, operate in proven or high-growth markets and will be driven by exceptional management teams, with the vision and ambition to dominate their chosen sectors.

Nic Brisbourne, Investment Executive at CPE said of the recent investment: “buy.at is the best performing UK company in what is undoubtedly a very hot market. We are excited to be shareholders and look forward to working with them through the next phase of growth and international expansion.”

Joining as non-executive Chairman, Bruce McLaren will be a vital asset to the company, providing strategic guidance and a provision of knowledge to assist driving buy.at to its greatest growth potential. Commenting on his new role with buy.at Bruce said “this company has sensational technology that is the best in its class and a great management team. It’s ready to move up to the next plateau and become a major European player in the near term.”

For further information on the buy.at affiliate marketing network visit www.buy.at or call Chris Tradgett, New Client Manager at buy.at on 0191 241 6500 or email: chris.tradgett@perfiliate.com.

-End-

For further media information, please contact Anna Barry or Laura Przybek at Perfiliate Technologies Limited on 0191 241 6500, or anna.barry@perfiliate.com or laura.przybek@perfiliate.com

There is much ballyhoo about the occasional affiliate who violates the pay per click edicts in affiliate agreements. But there also merchants that have a devil may care attitude when it comes to rules and regulations.

One prime example is Citrix GoToMyPC on Commission Junction. I was looking through their linking options yesterday, and I came across Link ID 10360563 / Competitive Keywords for All Audiences.

I reread the name a couple of times, as I couldn’t imagine they were encouraging their affiliates to bid on their competitor’s names.

Then I read the description of the link… “This keyword link is including competitive keywords such as pcanywhere, timbuktu and logmein.”

Are they serious? They are telling their affiliates to bid on their competitor’s brand names? Yes, I’m afraid they are doing just that.

Underlying all the Editorial Guidelines are two simple principles that have worked for thousands of advertisers already in the program:

Clearly and accurately describe your site.

Emphasize the unique benefits of your product or service.

Unless the Citrix GoToMyPC affiliates are running sites that compare GoToMyPC to the competing products, it looks to me that bidding on those competitor’s names for the purpose of driving traffic to GoToMyPC. This is expressly forbidden by Google.

The Google AdWords Editorial Guidelines also state, “Your keywords and ad text must be relevant to your site, products, or services.”

I searched on Google for pcanywhere and, sure enough, a couple of the GoToMyPC affiliates were adhering to the suggested strategy: bidding on pcanywhere and funneling the traffic to GoToMyPC (see image to the right).

I’m sure GoToMyPC isn’t the only merchant engaging in such bottom feeder marketing – they are just the one I happened upon.

Wondering aloud…will CJ clamp down on this activity? How about Google – it’s a violation of their rules after all. If nothing else, I’d imagine Symantec isn’t too happy about this misuse of the pcAnywhere™ brand name.

As an affiliate marketer, you code, your content, your copy, etc. is your business. So what are you going to do if your hard drive or machine dies on you?

The solution is to get yourself an external hard drive. Think of it as cheap business insurance.

You’ll also need a backup software program to automate the process. Otherwise, you can copy all of the files manually to your external hard drive.

Not only does this provide you with protection in the event of some technical failure, but it also protects you against the sort of stupid mistakes that happen late at night.

What you do with an external hard drive is to backup your entire hard drive to the external hard drive on a regular basis – daily or so.

Personally, I make a complete duplication of my system each week, and every night I back up any new files. And I have a second external hard drive off site, which gets a complete backup of my laptop ever couple weeks.

If you don’t want to buy two external hard drives, you can also do incremental backups to DVDs.

While you are protecting your data, you should also consider safeguarding your machines by getting a battery backup to block power surges, spikes, and outages that can damage your computer equipment and corrupt important data.

The show provides an opportunity for affiliate marketing and search engine marketing executives to get together and learn from one another in a unique, cooperative environment.

The Keynote Speaker will be Jim Bouton – New York Yankee 20-game winner, best selling author, TV Sportscaster, actor, inventor, and businessman.

The Early Bird registration rates of $949 (full conference) and $199 (exhibit hall only) are going up after March 31. Starting April 1, the rates to register for Affiliate Summit will be $1,449 (full conference) and $299 (exhibit hall only).

Affiliate Summit will have a number of new perks for attendees, based on feedback from previous attendees. One benefit to attendees, in response to numerous requests is that the conference is going to be captured on video, and the video will be made available to all registered attendees for free.

Rooms at the WALT DISNEY WORLD Resort Hilton are available at an Affiliate Summit group rate of $112 a night until June 10. After that, the hotel will charge the prevailing rate. Rooms can booked during the conference registration process or directly through the WALT DISNEY WORLDR Resort Hilton at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/hilton

For more information about the Affiliate Summit show, including the companies currently registered, please visit http://www.AffiliateSummit.com. Subscribe to the Affiliate Summit Real Deal Newsletter for breaking news, tips and the latest information about the affiliate marketing industry at http://www.RealDealNewsletter.com

About Affiliate Summit, Inc.
Affiliate Summit, Inc. was founded by affiliate marketing industry veterans Shawn Collins and Missy Ward and serves the affiliate marketing professional community. With three consecutive sold-out Affiliate Summit Conferences under its belt, its mission to be the leading global source of learning and networking opportunities surrounding the affiliate marketing industry has been brought to fruition. For additional information about the conference, please visit www.affilatesummit.com or contact us 800-258-6094.

If anybody registers through your link, you will receive a complimentary registration to the Affiliate Summit conference.

The registration you receive will be equal in value to the type you refer (i.e. refer an exhibit hall only pass, get an exhibit hall only pass – refer a full conference pass, get a full conference pass).

This is for real affiliates only, not employees of merchants or networks that have a test account.

There is a troublesome story that hasn’t been getting enough attention lately, and it could negatively impact the pocketbooks of all affiliate marketers.

In late February, ICANN’s (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Board of Directors met and approved a pending deal with VeriSign for the .COM registry.

The registry is different from a registrar, in that they maintain the Internet routing systems, domain availability lookups and basic records.

The registry sells domain names to the registrars (i.e. 1&1, Go Daddy and Moniker) at a fixed rate, currently $6 per name, and then the registrar chooses to either discount the cost to lure customers or mark it up.

Anyhow, back to how this could impact you. The agreement enables VeriSign to increase prices by 7% annually in four of the next six years.

But it’s not a done deal just yet. It still must be approved by the Department of Commerce. That’s where you come in. Bob Parsons, Chairman and Founder of Go Daddy, has provided a suggested form letter at http://www.bobparsons.com/ICANNletsusdown.html to contact your Congressional Representatives and/or Senators.

Q: How can I tell if my Web site is ready to offer an affiliate program?

A: I’m glad you asked. I see too many people try to launch an affiliate program at the same time they are launching their site, or shortly after the site has launched.

My suggestion would be to have your site out there and generating sales or leads for a good year or so before looking into an affiliate program.

The reason here is to get all of the kinks out and establish a track record for your site. After all, affiliates aren’t willing to be your lab rats and you must determine that your site can successfully perform.

That issue out of the way, a site that successfully transacts can generally work for an affiliate program. That said, if you’ve got something very niche or regional, it can be a big challenge to find a decent number of quality affiliates.